What's the worst that could happen?

Wednesday

May 6, 2009 at 7:38 AM

Danny GardnerGuest Columnist

These days when banks, insurance companies, car companies, and governments are “too big to fail,” I suppose American taxpayers could end up owning everything … which means Washington would own everything … including all our livelihoods and worldly possessions.After all, private property is a relatively new concept in 3,500 years of recorded history.We take so many things for granted: the sun will rise and set tomorrow, and death and taxes will continue to be inevitabilities.Remember the Mary Tyler Moore Show?One day Mary was feeling blue. Ted the anchorman offered her a solution only Ted could offer. “You know what your problem is, Mary? You get up every morning, drink your coffee, go to work, face the same people and same issues everyday, return home, cook supper, watch TV, read a little bit, then go to bed,” Ted said in a tired, routine tone.To which Mary acceded reluctantly.Then Ted exclaimed excitedly and exuberantly, “Mary, you need to get up every morning! Drink your coffee! Go to work! Face the same people and same issues you face everyday! Return home! Cook supper, watch TV, and read a little bit, before going to bed!”In other words, attitude affects one’s altitude.I just finished reading “The Fourth Turning,” by William Strauss and Neil Howe. In their own words, “Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle (of four) spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum. Together, the four turnings of the saeculum comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and destruction.”I’ve read futurists’ writings from Ayn Rand and George Orwell to Alvin Toffler and more recently today’s George Friedman and Fareed Zakaria. From visions of totalitarianism to utopia, these writers have painted wildly differing views of America’s future. The difference between these prognosticators and Strauss and Howe (S&H) appears to be S&H’s reliance on the inevitability of historical cycles and how generational cycles overlap history.S&H identify the saeculum’s four turnings: “The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays. “The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime. “The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants. “The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.”Overlay these turnings with four or five generations of ideals and inclinations, and S&H offer some pretty impressive insights into our current crisis.What roles will the Silent generation, Boomers, 13th and Millennials play?There’s no shortage of insights today regarding our crises, but few if any rival S&H’s insights written in 1997. “The Fourth Turning” was published in 1997 well before George W. Bush, 9/11, or Barack Hussein Obama. According to S&H, the Crisis or Fourth Turning will begin in the mid Oh Oh’s and end around the mid 2020’s. We’ve only just begun. They identified five generations (birth years) and their archetype roles: GI (1901-1924) Hero; Silent (1925-1942) Artist; Boom (1943-1960) Prophet; Thirteenth (1961-1981) Nomad; and Millennial (1982- ?) Hero. So, what’s the worst that can happen? On one hand, “The next Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armaggedon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly.”On the other, “If the Fourth Turning ends triumphantly, much of the modern world may follow the same saecular rhythm and share in the same saecular triumph…many might hope that the world could achieve an ‘end of history,’ a destination for mankind that Francis Fukuyama describes (with some irony) as ‘an end of wars and bloody revolutions’ in which, ‘agreeing on ends, men would have no large causes for which to fight.’ Is such an outcome possible? Probably not.”That’s what I think too.